PENGUIN CLASSICS THE TÁIN

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2 PENGUIN CLASSICS THE TÁIN CIARAN CARSON was born in 1948 in Belfast, where he is Professor of Poetry at Queen s University. He is the author of nine collections of poems, including First Language, which won the 1993 T. S. Eliot Prize. He has written four prose books; Last Night s Fun, a book about Irish traditional music; The Star Factory, a memoir for Belfast; Fishing for Amber: A Long Story; and Shamrock Tea, a novel, which was longlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize. His translation of Dante s Inferno (2002) was awarded the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and in 2003 he was made honorary member of the Irish Translators and Interpreters Association. In 2005 he published The Midnight Court, a translation of the classic Irish text Cúirt an Mheán Oíche, by Brian Merriman. 2

3 CIARAN CARSON The Táin A New Translation of the Táin Bó Cúailnge PENGUIN BOOKS 3

4 PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi , India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England This translation first published 2007 Published in paperback in Penguin Classics Translation and editorial material copyright Ciaran Carson, 2007 All rights reserved The moral right of the translator has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

5 In memory of the storyteller John Campbell of Mullaghbawn, Co. Armagh, born 1933, died

6 Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Further Reading A Note on the Translation Pronunciation Guide I The Pillow Talk and its Outcome II The Táin Begins III They Get to Know About Cú Chulainn IV The Boyhood Deeds of Cú Chulainn V Guerrilla Tactics VI Single Combat VII They Find the Bull VIII The Great Slaughter IX The Combat of Cú Chulainn and Fer Diad X The Multiple Wounds of Cethern XI Skirmishing XII The Ulstermen Come Together XIII The Final Battle Notes 6

7 Acknowledgements I am first of all most grateful to Marcella Edwards of Penguin Classics, whose idea it was to commission this translation. It would never have occurred to me otherwise. Thanks are due to Liam Breatnach, Greg Toner and Michael Cronin, who provided me with useful reading lists of background and critical material. Conversations with Bob Welch, Aodán Mac Póilin and Brian Mullen helped me to clarify some aspects of the translation. My wife Deirdre read the work in progress, as she has done with all my work since we met some thirty years ago; as always, her response and her suggestions were invaluable. 7

8 Introduction Táin Bó Cúailnge is the longest and most important tale in the Ulster Cycle, a group of some eighty interrelated stories which recount the exploits of the Ulaid, a prehistoric people of the north of Ireland, from whom the name of Ulster derives. The authors of these stories are anonymous. Briefly, the Táin tells of how Queen Medb of Connacht, envious that her husband Ailill owns a prize bull, Finnbennach the White-horned, the superior of any that she possesses, decides to go on an expedition to steal the Donn Cúailnge, the Brown Bull of Cooley, in the province of Ulster. At this time the Ulstermen are laid low by an ancient, periodic curse 1 which renders them unfit for battle, and the defence of the province is undertaken by Cú Chulainn. At the beginning of the Táin Cú Chulainn is a shadowy figure, but he gradually emerges as its chief protagonist, a figure of immense physical, supernatural and verbal resource who engaged the attention of many later Irish and Anglo- Irish writers. By a series of guerrilla tactics, chariot-fighting and single combat, he holds off the Connacht army until the Ulstermen recover. Fer Diad, Cú Chulainn s best friend, is tricked by Medb into challenging him to single combat and is killed by Cú Chulainn. A final battle ensues. Medb and her forces are defeated. The two bulls clash. They die fighting each other, and a peace is made between Ulster and Connacht. Such are the bare bones of the story; its origins, its transmission and the modus operandi of its authors are a more complicated matter, and have been the subject of much scholarly debate. There are several legends, or versions of the same legend, concerning the transmission of the Táin. A typical example is that given by Maghnus Ó Domhnaill, a lord of Donegal, in his account of the life of St Colm Cille, written under O Domhnaill s direction at his castle in Lifford in The story, referring to events of some 900 years earlier, can be summarized as follows: Senchan the High Bard of Erin comes to stay with Gúaire, a prince of Connacht, together with his entourage of three fifties of master poets and three fifties of apprentices, each and every one of them with two women and a servant and a dog. They eat him out of house and home, since Gúaire is forced to gratify their every whim for fear of satire. When Gúaire s brother, the hermit Marbán, hears of this he curses them, taking away their gift of poetry until such times as they can recite the whole of the Táin. For a year and a day they scour Ireland interviewing bards and storytellers in search of 8

9 the Táin, with no success, for only fragments of that long story survive. At last Senchan goes to Colm Cille, who takes him to the grave of Fergus Mac Róich, one of the chief protagonists of the Táin. Fergus, summoned from the grave by Colm Cille, proceeds to narrate the whole story, which is written down by St Ciaran of Cluain on the hide of his pet dun cow: hence Lebor na huidre, The Book of the Dun Cow. This story is an allusion to another famous legend concerning Colm Cille himself: admiring a certain book belonging to St Finnen, Colm Cille asks him if he can copy it; the book deserves a wider audience. Finnen refuses. Colm Cille secretly copies the book anyway. According to Ó Domhnaill, the room in which Colm Cille works is illuminated by the five fingers of his hand, which blaze like five candles. Colm Cille is spied on by a youth, who, attracted by the preternatural light, peers through a hole in the church door, whereupon his eye is plucked out by Colm Cille s pet crane. The youth goes to Finnen, who restores the eye. (I note in passing that a plausible etymology for Finnen is fair bird.) Finnen disputes Colm Cille s right to the copy, and the two clerics ask Diarmaid, the High King, to resolve the issue, whereupon he makes what has been called the first copyright judgment: To every cow her calf; to every book its copy. For books then were, quite literally, made from calves, as borne out by the English word vellum, from Old French vel, a calf. As it happens, the book known to us as Lebor na huidre or The Book of the Dun Cow now in the keeping of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin does indeed contain a partial version of the Táin, as well as an account of the life of Colm Cille; but this text (of which only 67 vellum leaves survive from a total of some 130) was written in the year 1100 or so, and not in the sixth century when Colm Cille lived. However, it is thought that much of The Book of the Dun Cow is derived from texts of the ninth century, now no longer extant, which might in turn have been based on texts of two or three centuries earlier. But we cannot know to what extent these putative antecedents were based on oral accounts which would themselves have been transmitted in several versions, changed, improved or corrupted as they were recounted by different storytellers with different historical, cultural and artistic agendas. So it is with the Táin itself, which has been collated as two main versions or recensions. Recension I is a marriage of the Lebor na huidre text and another partial but complementary text found in the fourteenth-century Yellow Book of Lecan. It is made up of several linguistic strata, and includes many interpolations, re-writings, palimpsests, redundancies, repetitions, narrative contradictions and lacunae: evidence, perhaps, that this version of the Táin was compiled from an oral tradition which would include variant performances. Recension II, found in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster, is an attempt to present a more unified narrative. It contains the introductory Pillow Talk episode absent from Recension I, as well as a much fuller account of Cú Chulainn s combat with Fer Diad. Although it resolves many of the inconsistencies, and has been deemed a more literary version by many commentators, Recension II often has a florid and prolix style less congenial 9

10 to modern taste than the laconic force of Recension I. Frank O Connor 2 has called the Táin a simply appalling text endlessly scribbled over, and its interpretation a task better suited to the archaeologist than the literary critic, because it is like an excavation that reveals a dozen habitation sites. The Táin might well be an archaeological site, but it need not be an appalling prospect. One could equally well see it as a magnificently ruined cathedral, whose fabric displays the ravages of war, fashion and liturgical expediency: a compendium of architectural interpolations, erasures, deliberate archaisms, renovations and restorations; a space inhabited by many generations, each commenting on their predecessors. Or one can see the Táin as an exemplar of what has been called the supple stylistic continuum 3 of early Irish writing, a fluid mix of poetry and prose. The prose itself can be separated into three main stylistic strands: the straightforward, laconic style of the general narrative and dialogue, particularly evident in the earliest version of the Táin; a formulaic style found primarily in descriptive passages, especially where an observer describes a distant scene to an audience; and an alliterative, heavily adjectival style typical of the later writing. The poetry, which is rhymed and syllabic in form, is spoken by characters at certain heightened points of the action. The Táin also includes passages of the genre known as rosc (pl. roscada), or rhetorics. These are by far the most problematic elements in the text, and may represent its earliest linguistic stratum. They might, however, include deliberate archaisms. They are usually marked in the manuscripts by.r. in the margin, indicating that the medieval scribes recognized them as a distinct formal element. They are written as continuous blocks of unpunctuated rhythmic prose, densely alliterative and syntactically ambiguous. It has been suggested that they might in fact be poems written to archaic metrical principles, using a stressed rather than a syllabic line. Whatever the case, their gnomic quality has resisted translation until comparatively recently. Whether their obscurity is due to unintentional or deliberate garbling is open to debate. Roscada, like the verse in the Táin, are spoken by characters in the course of the action, and can at times be interpreted as verbal jousting or an exchange of veiled threats: a good example is the dialogue between Ailill and Fergus just after Cuilluis, Ailill s charioteer, has stolen Fergus s sword. The Táin, then, is a compilation of various styles. 4 In this context one might dwell on the range of possible meanings embodied in the Irish word táin. The Irish title Táin Bó Cúailnge has been translated as The Cattle Raid of Cooley, and táin can indeed mean an act of capturing or driving off, a raid, a foray, or the story of such an exploit. There are seven such tales in the Ulster cycle, known collectively as tána: they thus constitute a genre. But táin can also mean a large gathering of people, an assembly, a conglomeration, a procedure. Without stretching it too much, one could say that táin can mean a compilation or anthology of stories and verse, which is precisely what the Táin is: words captured on calf-skin. The naming of Táin Bó Cúailnge thus 10

11 enacts and embodies its own narrative and scribal procedures. The Táin is obsessed by topography, by place-names and their etymologies. Or rather, their alleged etymologies, for many if not most of the stories behind the names are retrospective inventions: by virtue of narrative licence, they come after the names and not before them. Some of the place-names might not exist at all, but are literary fictions, created for the greater glory or shame of whatever hero fought or died in that imagined realm, or to commemorate whatever foul or noble deed occurred there. A typically laconic example goes as follows: Lethan came to his ford on the river Níth in Conaille. Galled by Cú Chulainn s deeds, he lay in wait for him. Cú Chulainn cut off his head and left it with the body. Hence the name Áth Lethan, Lethan s Ford. A likely story, we might say, given the fact that the most obvious meaning of Áth Lethan is broad ford. But we are taken in by the narrative drive, for this is one of a series of such encounters, and for that moment we summon up a warrior called Lethan, the Broad. And we note that the ford is his even before he comes to it. His fate is predicated by the name. After his death he pays no further part in the story, but the story renders him memorable. He becomes an item in the landscape of the Táin, embodied in its elaborate dindsenchas, the lore of high places. That mode of thinking, of landscape as a mnemonic map, is still current in Ireland. I once had the privilege of accompanying the late Paddy Tunney on a car journey through his native County Fermanagh. Known as The Man of Songs, Tunney was a living thesaurus of stories, songs, poems and recitations, and as we drove through this townland or that, passing by otherwise unremarkable farmsteads or small hedgy fields or stretches of bog, by this lake or that river or wellhead, he would relate their history, lilt an accompanying reel or jig, or sing snatches of the songs that sprang from that source, and tell stories of the remarkable characters who once dwelt there. 5 I have no idea how many thousands of words were thus encompassed in that extraordinary memory of his, but I do know that for him place, story and song were intimately and dynamically connected, and that his landscape spoke volumes. Entering it at any point led to immense narrative consequences. Indeed, we might address some of the alleged deficiencies of the Táin as a text if we consider it not as a straightforward story-line running from A to B, but as a journey through a landscape, with all sorts of interesting detours to be taken off the main route, like a series of songs with variant airs. My foray with Paddy Tunney into Fermanagh was, like the Táin, a compendium of different genres storytelling, verse, song, speculation about the origin of this place-name or that. Another journey on another day would have produced different results, or similar results differently ordered. The landscape is a 11

12 source-book. So it must have been for the authors and the audience of the Táin. Each would have been familiar with the general lie of the land, and some would have been more knowledgeable than others with regard to one or another detail of its topography. Different performers would treat its various elements differently. There would have been a few master navigators, like Tunney, who had the whole map in their heads. So I have no difficulty with the proposition, disparaged by some scholars with no experience of a living oral culture, that a narrative of Táin-like dimensions could have existed in several or many oral versions. The prodigious memory of some preliterate or illiterate individuals is well attested. That is not to deny the interaction of oral and literate cultures which began with the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. One must have influenced the other. In this context the story of how St Ciaran writes down the Táin at the dictation of Fergus can be seen as a parable of the superiority of Christian learning over mere Irish pagan lore: as if to say, even your own history is unreliable, recorded in the fickle human memory, whereas our words, inscribed in books and their copies, shall flourish and survive unaltered for all time. The monkish redactor of the Book of Leinster felt compelled to add to the end of the Táin, a blessing on everyone who shall faithfully memorize the Táin as it is written here and shall not add any other form to it. He both disparages and privileges the art of memory. He writes that sentence in Irish, the language of the lay person, and then adds in Latin, the language of the cleric: But I who have written down this story (historia) or rather this fable, give no credence to the story, or fable. For some things in it are demonic deceptions, and others poetic figments; some are possible, and others not; while still others are for the entertainment of idiots (delectationem stultorem). The shift in language is telling. This is a man who dwells in both languages, and the pagan and the Christian worlds they represent. He has a foot in both camps. He wades in a ford of meaning. Much of the action in the Táin takes place at fords. The Irish for ford, áth, is cognate with Latin vado, I go and English wade. There are deep ends to these fords. In Irish mythology, streams and rivers are liminal zones between this world and the Otherworld. The cry of the Banshee is commonly heard near flowing water, and in Gaelic-speaking Scotland the Banshee is known as the Bean-nighe, the Washerwoman at the Ford, who washes the grave-clothes of those about to die. In the Táin, the ford is a metaphysical space, a portal and a barrier, a place of challenge, a border between Cú Chulainn and the rest of Ireland. Or, as we have seen, it represents a twilight zone and there are many such twilights in the Táin between the pagan and the Christian worlds. The young Cú Chulainn overhears the druid and seer Cathbad 12

13 pronouncing that if a warrior took up arms on that day, his name would endure in Ireland as a byword for heroic deeds, and that stories about him would be told forever. Whereupon Cú Chulainn rushes to the king and asks him for arms. He recognizes that deeds can never achieve fame without their being recounted in words. History is made up of story. The druid s corollary when he sees him taking up arms, that the life of such a warrior would be short, means nothing to him. His death will be his salvation. Midway through the Táin Cú Chulainn falls nearly mortally wounded and is made to rise again, like Christ at Easter, after a sleep of three days. In some versions of an ancillary tale, The Death of Cú Chulainn, he dies, like Christ, aged thirtythree. Cú Chulainn s heroic life and death can be read as a perfect Christian life, for all the slaughter it entails. Some scholars have suggested that early Irish prose might have been modelled on the narrative procedures of the Lives of the Saints hagiographies such as that of Colm Cille, which contain episodes as impossible, or miraculous, as any related in the Táin but it is at least as valid to argue that early hagiographies were modelled on folk tales, or that they are a type of folklore. In any event the two are inextricably connected. A case in point is the tale Siaburcharput Con Culainn ( The Phantom Chariot of Cú Chulainn ), in which St Patrick attempts to convert Láegaire Mac Crimthann, high king of Tara, to Christianity. The king refuses, unless Patrick can resurrect Cú Chulainn in his chariot. The saint does so; Cú Chulainn appears and describes the hell to which he, as a pagan, is confined, whereupon Mac Crimthann immediately asks to be baptized. For his co-operation Cú Chulainn, his charioteer and horses are allowed into heaven. Interestingly, Colm Cille (actually a nickname meaning Church Dove ) was baptized Crimthann, or fox, and as a canine figure he can be linked to Cú Chulainn, the Hound of Culann. It is perhaps no accident that both saint and pagan hero are abbreviated as CC in medieval manuscripts. Both Colm Cille and Cú Chulainn are warriors; they are both accomplished poets, and proficient in ogam script; both are associated with cranes; and both have superhuman powers. Such interweaving of pagan myth and Christianity is exemplified by another story in the Ulster Cycle in which Conchobar, King of Ulster and foster-father of Cú Chulainn, dies at the same time as Christ. Indeed, it was once thought that the events of the Ulster Cycle did indeed take place around the time of Christ, but it is now accepted that such a chronology is an invention of the clerical redactors of the stories, and it is perhaps more useful to think of these narratives as existing in an imaginative realm rather than in any definite historical period. However, there may be some justification for seeing the Táin as a window into the Iron Age. 6 Whether or not it is an Irish Iron Age is another question. For instance, it is undeniable that the social and warfaring practices embedded in the narrative bear remarkable similarities to those of the Gauls or Celts 7 of continental Europe, as described by Diodorus 13

14 Siculus in around 60 BC: In their journeyings and when they go into battle the Gauls use chariots drawn by two horses, which carry the charioteer and the warrior They first hurl their javelins at the enemy and then step down from their chariots and join battle with their swords. Certain of them despise death to such a degree that they enter the perils of battle with no more than a girdle about their loins It is also their custom to step out in front of the line and challenge the most valiant men from among their opponents to single combat, brandishing their weapons in front of them to terrify their adversaries. And when any man accepts the challenge to battle, they then beak forth into a song of praise of the valiant deeds of their ancestors and in boast of their own high achievements, reviling all the while and belittling their opponent, and trying, in a word, by such talk to strip him of his bold spirit before the combat. 8 The passage is especially telling when one considers that for all the chariotfighting in the Táin, the archaeological evidence for chariots in Ireland is almost entirely lacking. As Barry Cunliffe puts it, While it is as well to remember the old archaeological adage that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, the possibility must be allowed that chariots were never a feature of Irish Iron Age society. 9 Whatever the case, the chief attraction of the Táin lies not in the ultimately insoluble problem of its origins, but in its tremendous artistic power. In its abrupt shifts from laconic brutality to moments of high poetry and deep pathos, from fantastic and vividly imagined description to darkly obscure utterance, from tragedy to black humour, it has no parallel in Irish literature, with the possible exception of another multi-layered, polyphonic tale, James Joyce s Ulysses. NOTES 1. See pp , note In A Short History of Irish Literature: a Backward Look (New York: 1967). 3. Patricia Kelly, in J. P. Mallory (ed.), Aspects of The Táin (Belfast: 1992). 4. For a comprehensive analysis, see Maria Tymoczo, Translation in a Postcolonial Context (Manchester: 1999). 5. Paddy Tunney died in 2002, aged 81. Some notion of his repertoire and procedures may be gleaned from his books, The Stone Fiddle: My Way to Traditional Song and Where Songs Do Thunder: Travels in Traditional Song (both Belfast: 1991). 14

15 6. See Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, The Oldest Irish Tradition: A Window on the Iron Age (Cambridge: 1964). 7. I use the term advisedly. For an examination of the concept of Celticness see Barry Cunliffe, The Celts: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: 2003). 8. Diodorus of Sicily, with an English translation by C. H. Old-father (London: 1934). 9. Barry Cunliffe, The Celts. 15

16 Further Reading Translations Thomas Kinsella s The Tain is widely available. Cecile O Rahilly s editions Táin Bó Cúailnge from the Book of Leinster, and Táin Bó Cúailnge Recension I (Dublin, 1967 and 1976) carry English translations. The texts may be ordered by ing the publishers, the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, at bookorders@admin.dias.ie. Lady Gregory s Cuchulain of Muirthemne (reprinted, Gerrards Cross, 1970) contains much of the Táin narrative in a mixture of translation and paraphrase. Patrick Brown s website at has good colloquial translations-cum-paraphrases of some of the Ulster Cycle stories, including the Táin. Also available online are Winfred Faraday s 1904 translation of Recension I at faraday.pdf and Joseph Dunn s 1914 translation of Recension II at ( The Book of Leinster text was first edited and published by Ernst Windisch as Die altirische Heldensaga Táin Bó Cúalnge nach dem Book von Leinster, with his German translation (Leipzig, 1905). There is a French translation by Henri d Arbois de Jubainville, Táin Bó Cúalnge, Enlèvement du taureau divin et des vaches de Cooley (Paris, 1907). Critical Studies Two very useful compilations are J. P. Mallory (ed.), Aspects of the Táin (Belfast, 1992); and J. P. Mallory and Gerard Stockman (eds.), Ulidia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales (Belfast, 1994). Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson s The Oldest Irish Tradition: A Window on the Iron Age (Cambridge, 1964) is much referred to in the literature. Maria Tymoczo s Translation in a Postcolonial Context (Manchester, 1999) is a brilliant study of the cultural politics of translation with special reference to the Táin. Background Reading Barry Cunliffe s The Celts: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2003) is the best introduction to the topic, elegantly written and containing a great deal of 16

17 information in a small space. Useful reference works are James McKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (Oxford, 1998) and Dáithí Ó hógáin, The Lore of Ireland (Cork, 2006). Simon James, Exploring the World of the Celts (London, 2005) is accessible and attractively illustrated. 17

18 A Note on the Translation In 1969 Dolmen Press of Dublin published The Táin, translated from the Irish by Thomas Kinsella, with brush drawings by Louis de Brocquy, in an edition of 1,750 copies. It was immediately hailed as a classic for the vibrancy of the translation and the magnificence of its graphic accompaniment. A massmarket edition was published by Oxford University Press a year later. Its cultural impact was immense. 1 No easily accessible translation of the work had existed until then. Those that did were mostly rendered in a dutiful translatorese that did little justice to the dynamism of the original; the poetry was written as prose, and the problematic rosc passages were left mostly untranslated. The title alone, sometimes rendered as The Cattle Raid of Cooley was decidedly off-putting, suggesting a dime Western rather than an epic. 2 Kinsella s radical decision to combine the English definite article with the key Irish word offered a parallel with national epics such as the Mahabharata, the Mabinogion, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and so on. Other parallels were made: appearing as it did at an especially violent period of Northern Ireland s history the current Troubles having begun in 1968 The Táin seemed to speak not so much of an ancient past, but of an urgent present. Like many others of my generation, I well remember the shock and delight I experienced when I first read it. The present translation would not have been possible without Kinsella s ground-breaking text. Had Kinsella not undertaken his translation, there would have been no public consciousness of Táin Bó Cúailnge. As I write, my original copy of the Oxford paperback edition of 1970 is on my desk, as it has been throughout the process of my translation. I began by trying not to compare my efforts with his; but I found the temptation to peep irresistible and, thereafter, as I proceeded with the translation, I checked every line of mine against Kinsella. I trust my translation is different. Nevertheless, there are occasions when my words do not differ a great deal from his. That is inevitable when more than one translation emerges from more or less the same text. And for better or for worse, my translation will be seen as a commentary on Kinsella; I hope it will also be taken as a tribute. My sources for the original text are Cecile O Rahilly s editions, Táin Bó Cúailnge from the Book of Leinster, and Táin Bó Cúailnge Recension I (Dublin, 1967 and 1976). A list of translations consulted appears in the Further Reading section. I have followed Kinsella in taking Recension I as my base text, but I have ordered some of the episodes somewhat differently, and 18

19 included some doublets and apparent contradictions that he has left out. Like him, I have incorporated elements of the Book of Leinster text, notably the pillow-talk and the Fer Diad episodes; I have also included some short passages that he has not. It should be noted that both recensions are divided into numerous headed sections The Death of Órlám, The Death of Lethan, The Combat of Fer Diad and Cú Chulainn, and so forth. Recension I has fiftytwo such episodes, varying in length from a few lines to several pages. Such an arrangement might be used to support the theory that the Táin is a sourcebook rather than a consistent, chronological narrative. Like Kinsella, I have ignored these divisions and their headings for the sake of narrative flow, and have arranged the translation in thirteen chapters (Kinsella has fourteen). Kinsella s Táin is prefaced by seven remscéla (prefatory tales or prequels ) which gave a background to the main narrative. I have not included these, but summarize them, where relevant, in the Notes to the text. Like Kinsella, I have attempted in the prose passages to be as faithful as possible to the Old Irish, if not wholly literal, and I trust that my translation can always be justified against the original. Kinsella, in his Introduction, acknowledges that it was necessary to take some liberties with the verse, and more particularly with the rosc passages: I do the same, but my treatment differs significantly from his in some respects. Firstly, I wanted to preserve in the translation some of the formal aspects of the poems. Whereas Kinsella renders these as relatively free verse, I have kept to the original syllable-count of the lines, except in a very few instances where it proved impossible. I have also included rhyme and assonance, though not in the manner of the original, since the aabb pattern of much of the verse would be difficult and tedious to replicate in English. Secondly, I have rendered the rosc passages into a kind of prose poetry which, by leaving gaps between phrases, attempts to indicate some of the syntactical ambiguity of the original. Overall, I hope I have given some notion of the stylistic heterogeneity of the text. With regard to place-names and personal names, I have retained the Old Irish spellings more or less as they are in O Rahilly s text. A guide to their pronunciation follows this section. The Irish names are rarely without meaning, and, for an Old Irish audience, would have acted as a kind of ironic commentary on the action. For instance, one of Cú Chulainn s many illadvised opponents is called Fer Báeth, which translates literally as foolish man. I have followed Kinsella s practice in giving English equivalents for some of the names within the text, and have done so in rather more instances, but only when it was possible to do so without disturbing the flow of the narrative. In other cases, where plausible equivalents can be found (and many of the names resist translation), they are glossed in the Notes to the text. Some of my derivations are speculative, or may be the product of wishful thinking; but this is wholly in the spirit of the dindsenchas tradition of fanciful etymology, not to mention the tendency of the Táin authors to invent placenames to fit the record. Likewise, my amalgamation and re-ordering of the original materials reflects the Táin s, history of being rewritten and edited by 19

20 various hands. There is no canonical Táin, and every translation of it is necessarily another version or recension. NOTES 1. In 1973 the concept of the Táin was brought to an even larger audience when the Celtic rock group Horslips released an album of the same name, with songs and music inspired by the Kinsella translation. 2. A point made in Maria Tymoczo, Translation in a Postcolonial Context (Manchester: 1999). 20